This invention relates to an electronic musical box (organ) in which a musical score can be readily stored, reproduced and renewed by simple operation.
In a conventional musical box available on the market, a particular musical score is stored by mechanical means. Therefore, with such a musical box, it is possible to repeatedly play the same musical score, but it is impossible to change the musical score to another one.
A number of large scale electronic musical instruments in which ordinarily a memory means and an inputting keyboard are provided so that the musical notes stored in the memory means are read out to be produced as musical tones have already been proposed. One of such conventional electronic musical instruments is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,878,750. In this electronic musical instrument, one inputting keyboard is used, in time division manner, for tone pitch and for duration. Accordingly, only one keyboard is employed, and the size of the instrument may be reduced. However, it is still disadvantageous in that its operation is considerably intricate because the same keyboard is selectively used in association with the operation of switching means. Furthermore, the memory means must have a considerably large capacity because it should store tone pitches and tone durations in combination, and it is accordingly expensive.